


Detective Naoto Shirogane: An Eldritch Elegy

by JotTheDragonScribe



Category: Persona 4, Persona Series, Persona | Revelations Persona
Genre: Gen, Naoto is 20 years old and the other two are about forty, Naoya and Naoto are cousins, Oneshot, Set five years after Persona 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27716360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JotTheDragonScribe/pseuds/JotTheDragonScribe
Summary: Naoto Shirogane, Private Eye.Not the kind that investigates dull affairs or hushed murders.The kind that stops gods from destroying humanity and arrests the idiots who summoned them.This is just another of those cases...[Naoto is reffered to by feminine pronouns but with masculine terms]
Relationships: Kirishima Eriko/Toudou Naoya (Established)
Kudos: 7





	Detective Naoto Shirogane: An Eldritch Elegy

**Author's Note:**

> So.  
> I could go study. Or I could finish one of the 512 fics I have to finish.  
> Or I could give you an open-ended oneshot that no one asked for, yay!
> 
> Based on a couple of discord convos.

The hotel's air conditioner hummed dutifully, the light artificial breeze flowing through the room. The rain pattered against the windows, leaving behind ephemeral droplets that would soon get assimilated by their kin.

Not quite the start to a noir movie, perhaps. The detective would've taken a drag out of a cheap cigarette, but she cared far too much for her own health. Perhaps a swig of whisky, but she had neither the age nor the world-weariness required to chug down the amber concoction.

An array of miscellaneous evidence were spread in front of her, atop that little table that existed in every hotel room. Far from a comfortable desk, but she never sought comfort. She sought the truth.

A thing that illuded her at the time of speaking. 

For the case she had taken had proven to be something... With some supernatural implications.

She once again picked up the case file, a group of sheets encased in a beige paper binder, her name written neatly on the intended square.

Naoto Shirogane. Private Eye.

Cops were unreliable. Quick to dismiss whatever wouldn't benefit them.  
Shirogane, on the other hand, had an obsession. Like any private investigator worth their salt.   
Her drug was truth. Her addiction, a deep seated curiosity that had nearly cost her life.   
And of course, a refusal to learn from such near-death experiences.

She smirked to herself. Yes, Detective Shirogane took only the cases that others were too skeptical to take.

She'd dealt with her own supernatural circumstances, some five years ago. Since then, "everyday" had become in-depth analysing of blurry photos and false evidence.

This one was almost like a breath of fresh air.  
No blur. No far away creatures, so distant that they needed to be identified by a red circle. No obvious forgery.  
All pictures were taken straight forward, with great resolution and definition. The work of a professional photographer. There was no coy beating around the bush. The beheaded, fungus covered man was snarling right into the camera. The three-headed woman with a smile a mile wide brandished her scissor proudly, charging to attack the camers holder. The cultists carried weapons and limbs. 

For as impressive as it had been, it could've all been a forgery. Shirogane scratched her chin, leaning back on her chair in deep thought. Was it worth it to forge such evidence? Her services weren't cheap, after all. The good detective didn't hunt ghosts or exorcise demons; she investigated cultists and brought to justice those who threatned to destroy the perceptible world.

She brought one of the developed photos close to her. A myriad of undecipherable symbols arranged in a bloodied circle. How quaint. Shirogane would've dismissed it for some puffed-chest teenagers trying to make themselves more important, but her cousin had just been visiting her grandfather when she had first received them by mail.

The man was an oddity, and that was to put it lightly. Humans, Shirogane had come to realized, always had a glint of doubt and fear in their eye. It was their nature; few were those that ever faced head on the darkest depths of their soul, that realized the inherent emptiness of the self and its simultaneous multitude.

Her cousin -Naoya Toudou was his name, her parent's nephew- never had such a thing.  
It wasn't as if he was confident; it was if he had faced such things that everything else was just taken in stride by him. A state of complete acceptance of whatever situation, of his whole self. 

Consider also the fact he spent a large part of his life past highschool running tirelessly around japan, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the wallet on his pocket. 

The man had looked towards the picture and immediately commented:  
"Ah, Tru'Nembra... I think?"

Shirogane could not help but stare at him.  
"Eriko knows more about this stuff, but the symbols seem familiar", he scratched the back of his head, "Though Tru'Nembra's usually summoned by music. Really weird, huh?"

To cut a very long story to its ground giblets, her cousin -and his wife- had come with.  
Neither her grandfather nor Kanji would've let her come to a horror-filled backwater town without older supervision, and the two seemed to know their way around... Eldritch gods.

Miss Kirishima was very knowledgeable, a great conversationalist, and did not ask questions when Naoto asked her to refer to h- the detective with male terms. So Shirogane could not complain.

"Naoto-kun?"  
Speak of the devil.  
Shirogane lifted herself off of her chair and answered the door. Miss Kirishima held another stack of photos in her hands, and a reference book of the occult under her arm. It had more post-its than pages.

"I am certain now that it is Tru'Nembra", she explained with a saccharine grin on her face, not unlike a mad scientist.  
Her enthusiasm was both appreciated and off-putting.  
Shirogane gestured for her to enter and she took that suggestion at once, laying her own files upon the table.

"It is uncommon, yes, for how many components are needed. But not unsound. It is very complex and known to take decades at a time", Eriko flipped to different pages in the book, showing her sources, "Summoning it with the 'music' sheets is far simpler, but It will take no contract should that occur... The complex method will lead it open to negociations, if anything out of awe for the effort taken to summon it"

Naoto leaned over the scattered papers, perusing the list of highly-unlikely events and ethereal materials that had to be gathered for the complex method.  
"So, they want this being to do their bidding, I imagine. Any thoughts on what such bidding may entail, Miss. Kirishima"

If possible, her grin grew wider.  
"See, that's where it gets very interesting, Naoto-kun", she flipped the pages until she reached a cut-out of an American newspaper article, dating back to the early 1900s.  
"Tru'Nembra manifests only through haunting music. Upon hearing it, any mortals are transported to its realm... However, it has no effect if the target cannot hear the music. The sound obeys all laws of this world, too, so it gets weaker with distance!"  
Naoto furrowed her brow.  
"A complex ritual to a highly specific ability... What is their purpose...?"

"I believe that is what we are here to find out, detective"  
"Hmm... Right you are."


End file.
